"Where Movie Critics Get A Taste Of Their Own Medicine"
Subscribe To Weekly Newsletter!

1/2 To paraphrase an old commercial I once saw hyping "Benny Hill" reruns, "Calendar Girls" is a film filled with Brits, wits and...well, I’m sure you can guess. Based on a true story, Helen Mirren and Julie Walters (both very funny) star as a pair of middle-aged British women who are members of an uncommonly dull ladies club (which promises "Enlightenment, Fun and Friendship) but which offers lectures on the joys of broccoli. When Walters’ husband dies of cancer, the two hit upon a scheme to raise money to purchase a new couch for the hospital waiting room-they, along with some of their fellow matrons, decide to pose naked for a fund-raising calendar that becomes an unexpected sensation. For most of its running time, "Calendar Girls" is a sweet and silly bit of wry, understated comedy that only begins to falter in the last third as the worldwide success of the calendar (including the inevitable cameo appearance by Jay Leno) threatens to tear the group apart. (While it may seem nifty and post-modern to make a movie in which the characters discuss the possibility of a movie being made of their lives, for example, it doesn’t really serve much of a purpose here.) Despite the narrative sagging, the film is a charmer and few moments at the movies this cinema will provoke as many smiles as the point near the end where one character remarks "So, we can get the sofa in the leather?"

1/2 One of the big winners of this year’s Cannes Film Festival (and one of the front-runners for the Best Foreign Film Oscar), "The Barbarian Invasions" looks like another entry in the Most Depressing Movie race that appears to be taking place this Christmas. After all, Denys Arcand’s film (a loose sequel to his previous "The Decline of the American Empire") revolves around a semi-cantankerous professor (Remy Girard, reprising his role from the previous film) who begins to forge a relationship with his estranged son (Stephane Rousseau) as he lies dying of cancer. While those moments are reasonably touching-especially when his old friends gather for one final reunion-"The Barbarian Invasions" works best as a brutally funny indictment of the Canadian health-care system. In this nightmare vision of socialized medicine, patients are stacked out in the hallways, patients have to slip across the border to America for advanced treatment and Remy’s son finds himself bribing hospital officials and sneaking out to buy heroin off the street for his father (who shrugs off the chaos around him because, as a committed socialist, "I voted for Medicare-I’ll accept the consequences.") to make his last days more comfortable. Some may be put off by the morbid tone of some of the humor (while others maybe be put off by the graphic discussion of 9/11 that jarringly appears out of nowhere) but those who can handle that will be rewarded with a lot of laughs, some impressive performances (especially by Marie-Josee Croze as a junkie who helps the son score drugs) and a finale that is, despite its predictability, genuinely moving.

Copyright © 2003 Peter Sobczynski
All rights reserved.
Used with permission
Peter's Archives

While the views expressed by Peter Sobczynski do not necessarily reflect the views of Criticdoctor.com, the Critic Doctor will occasionally examine Mr. Sobczynski's film reviews to bring forth an honest examination of those views expressed.